Recycled NASA Spacecraft On Target for Comet Flyby

Asa European comet probe prepares to swing by an asteroid this weekend, arecycled NASA spacecraft is headed for its own cosmic rendezvous with acomet.

NASA'sDeep Impact/Epoxi probe is zooming toward the Comet Hartley 2 and isexpectedto fly past the icy wanderer on Nov. 4. But first, the spacecraft —whichoriginally flew to a different comet in 2005 — had to return to Earthbrieflyto nab a speed boost, NASA officials said.

OnSaturday, the European Space Agency's Rosettaspace probewill fly bythe previously-unvisited asteroid Lutetia. The spacecraft will take thefirstever close-up photos of the space rock, while traveling on its currentpath toits main target, the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Membersof the Epoxi team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) inPasadena,Calif., are currently analyzing data returned from the Earth flyby inorder torefine the spacecraft trajectory estimates in preparation for theprobe's cometvisit.

The Epoxispacecraft was originally built as themother ship for NASA's DeepImpact mission which intentionallycrashed a probe into cometTempel 1 in 2005 todetermine the object's composition[Photosof the comet crash.]

Thespacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & TechnologiesCorp., inBoulder, Colo. JPL manages Epoxi for NASA's Science Mission DirectorateinWashington, D.C. The University of Maryland is the principalinvestigator institution.